Published: Monday, July 22, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Last Modified: Monday, July 22, 2013 at 2:30 p.m.

North Carolina was fifth in the nation in the number of guns reported lost or stolen in 2012 by licensed gun dealers, a report from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms shows.

But local statistics reveal that licensed dealers aren't the only ones falling victim to gun theft.

Since June 15, 28 firearms were stolen in 17 burglaries in New Hanover County.

Already this year, the Wilmington Police Department received reports of 90 guns stolen in burglaries. That's one less than in all of 2008, according to WPD statistics, and roughly 10 more than in years '09, '10 and '11. In all of 2012, WPD took 115 stolen guns reports.

"Guns are items taken from homes and cars and other places for two big reasons. The first is they have great value on the street. They're almost (like) cash in that they get traded around for other items of value like drugs and electronics," said New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David. "But the second big reason is that the people who frequently take these items are already convicted felons and unable to purchase them lawfully so they look to obtain them through other sources and obviously theft is one of those ways."

Casey Ludlum, Wilmington Police Department evidence technician, said that oftentimes, a gun stolen in Wilmington ends up in another state. She said just last week she got a call from Essex, N.J., police saying officers there recovered a gun stolen from Wilmington in 2010 off of a man they'd arrested.

"The heroin pipeline comes out of New Jersey," he said. He said it's not only strangers who commit the burglaries, either.

"A lot of time, it's someone that person knows. They wait for them to go out of town, they break into their home and steal the weapons," he said.

One of the issues Ludlum faces in getting a weapon returned to the rightful owner is that sometimes serial numbers have been obliterated.

"When someone gets a gun that's hot they'll file the serial number off it, that way you can't trace a gun that's stolen," Brewer said. But even that's a Catch-22 if a criminal thinks it will prevent them from picking up a felony charge, Brewer said.

"Having a gun with the serial number filed off is a felony, too."

Ludlum said another reason finding owners is difficult is because many people haven't recorded the serial numbers of their weapons or other valuables, for that matter.

"The problem is, people don't always know their serial numbers so if it's run through (the national database) it may not show as stolen," she said.

Ludlum said in addition to running recovered guns through the national database, she runs them through a smaller, localized database which often hits on smaller departments that may not have reported the theft federally. But owners can do their part in helping police return their items to them.

"The best thing for people to do is to write down their serial numbers and secure everything as best as you can. It's the best way for us to discover owners," she said. "If police officers get out with someone, and they know they have property that doesn't belong to them and is stolen, if we don't' have a serial number we can't prove it's not theirs."

David said his office is handling a number of firearm theft cases, and the culprits hit everything – commercial offices, cars, homes, storage units, shops.

"I can say we have many cases pending in my office where victims of crime with burglaries and thefts and robberies have guns that are taken from them either directly or from their homes and cars," he said. "It's because thieves need these guns for their own business, which is frequently gang activity or dealing drugs – and a gun is valuable."